15A030 A Hornberger Whodunnit by Jim Davies, 4/28/2015    

Out last week came a new book from Jacob Hornberger of the Future of Freedom Foundation, very well worth reading: Régime Change. There's hardly a shortage of publications about the JFK assassination, but to my mind this one buries the Lone Nut Theory very deep.

He not only buries it, he ridicules it. Once Hornberger points them out, there are numerous perfectly obvious reasons why Lee Harvey Oswald could not have been a lone-nut killer, out for notoriety like Mark Chapman (who shot John Lennon) or John Hinckley (who shot Ronald Reagan.) I should have realized much sooner how obvious they are.

For example: if he wanted notoriety, why did Oswald strenuously deny his guilt to reporters at Dallas P.D.? Or if he was the lone shooter eager to make his escape, why did he take time to hide his rifle across the room on Floor Six of the TSBD, and to sit in the cafeteria drinking Coke? If he went to work that day intending to shoot JFK, how come he didn't pack his pistol as well as the rifle, instead of returning home for the pistol (why?) after escaping his workplace? And then there's the motive; he was at least pretending to be a communist. As such, he would have been very pleased with President Kennedy's attempts to heal the breach between the US and the USSR, in the teeth of opposition from his own military. Why, therefore, would Oswald wish him dead in the first place?

These key questions go well beyond the usual arguments about how an indifferent marksman could have pulled off three shots in 8.3 seconds, two of which were accurate. They leave the Lone Nut Theory in tatters. And yet that is the theory that the FedGov, to this very day, is determined to thrust down the throats of a supposedly gullible public.

Half a century of persistent lies to support an increasingly unbelievable theory are not readily explained, but here's a tentative prediction: not long hence, in the face of Jacob Hornberger's devastating demolition, the FedGov will abandon that effort and switch to an alternative set of lies.

The truth of the matter (as the book explains and as Oliver Stone's movie JFK shows) is that this was a coup d'état or régime change approved or led by Lyndon Johnson and vigorously executed by the military and the CIA - what Hornberger calls the National Security establishment. LBJ wanted the top job, the CIA wanted to survive JFK's announced intention to shred it, and the military brass at that time was so anti-communist as to think the USSR must be resisted in every possible way and that JFKs peace feelers were fatal.

The FedGov is not likely to admit this, and so will need to fabricate a new fable.

The one it will almost certainly choose is already on the table, and Régime Change deals with it, mainly in Chapter 4; it's called the WW-III Theory. In brief, this fable says that yes, LBJ did indeed orchestrate a cover-up, starting in Dallas as soon as it was clear he was to succeed his boss as President. He immediately arranged to stop the Texas autopsy, which would have revealed that JFK had been shot from both behind and in front (hence, a conspiracy) and ordered a false one safely in a military hospital in Washington; he set up the Warren Commission with orders to find there had been only a single shooter, and he arranged for that man to be killed before he could articulate a defense. All this (in the new fable) will be "justified" because LBJ was desperately concerned to avoid a nuclear war with Russia.

As Hornberger well explains, in 1963 the possibility of such a war was on everyone's mind, and the public outrage over a presumed Russian or Cuban assassination of a popular President would have made it impossible to avoid. Therefore, LBJ took the drastic step of falsifying facts - not so as to conceal a palace revolution (no, no!) but so as so save millions of lives in a nuclear war. Echoing Ciaphas, he reasoned "it is expedient for us, that one man [Oswald] should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not." What wisdom! What statesmanship!

That such a switch will occur seems probable to me not just because the preceding fabric of lies lies now in shreds, but also because it's been done before. When FDR's deception about Pearl Harbor came increasingly into the light, the Establishment responded by admitting that yes, perhaps that President had cut a few corners to get America into WW-II, but he was acting in the Nation's best interests; Hitler had to be defeated, it was a "good war." That is (they say) what leadership is about; doing the right thing, which isn't always what the people want.

So, they will say, did LBJ in and after 1963.

Régime Change cuts some of the ground under the WW-III Theory by saying that the timeline was wrong. The critical moment - the start of the deception - took place soon after 1:00 pm in Dallas, when LBJ ordered the coffin removed from Parkland and taken aboard Air Force One to Bethesda Naval; Hornberger says he could not possibly have known so soon that the shooter was a communist, since Oswald was not even arrested until 1:45 pm.

This is true, but to me it is not very convincing. Anyone at the time, including LBJ, upon hearing that the President had been shot, would leap to the opinion that Reds had done it; probably Kruschev's friend in Cuba, Fidel Castro, whom the CIA had only recently tried but failed to kill. It would have been a reasonable assumption, pending actual evidence. Hence, demolition of the WW-III Theory needs, in my opinion, more work than the book provides.

Provided only that TOLFAns take the simple action described on its Growler page, this new fable will still be circulating when it passes into history along with its creator, when nobody remains who will work for government. After then, all this kind of nonsense will vanish. There will be no President to assassinate, no NSA to spy on anyone, no military to bully the world, and no government doctors to falsify their autopsies. The long saga of JFK will remain only in the books that chronicle the absurdity, lethality and fear that accompany this monstrous institution.